Notwithstanding his friendly professions to the Lutherans, it soon appeared that if Francis would have been glad to see a Reformation after the Erasmian type, he had no sympathy with attacks upon the doctrine of the Sacraments or upon the hierarchical system of the Church, the topics which his sister, in her writings, had avoided. Nor had he any disposition to countenance movements that involved a religious division in his kingdom. As long as religious dissent was confined to men of rank and education, the King might discountenance the use of force to repress it; but when it penetrated into the lower ranks of the people, the case was different. Unity in religion was an element in the strength of his monarchy, of which he boasted. He prized the old maxim, "Un roi, un foi, un loi." When, therefore, in October, 1534, inconsiderate zealots posted at the corners of the streets in Paris, and even on the door of the King's chamber at Blois, placards denouncing the mass, he signalized his devotion to the Catholic religion by coming to Paris to take part in solemn religious processions, and in the burning, with circumstances of atrocious cruelty, of eighteen heretics. Yet again he showed himself anxious to cement a political alliance with the German Protestants, and even entered into negotiations looking to a union of the opposing religious parties. He went so far as to invite Melancthon to Paris to help forward the enterprise. He claimed that the persons who had been put to death were fanatics and seditious people, whom the safety of the State rendered it necessary to destroy. In truth, the Grand Master, Montmorenci, and the Cardinal de Tournon, active promoters of persecution, had persuaded him that the posting of the placards was the first step in a great plot of Anabaptists, who designed to do in France what they had done in Münster.1 But the unwillingness of Francis to produce a schism, or to place

1 Henri Martin, viii. 223.

THE INFLUENCE OF GENEVA.

253

himself in antagonism to the Catholic Church obliged him to give his approval to a rigid statement of doctrine, in opposition to the Protestant views, which the Sorbonne put forth, in the form of a direction to preachers.1 He even did not lift a finger, in 1545, to prevent the whole. sale slaughter of his unoffending Waldensian subjects. His governing aim was to uphold the power of France, and to withstand and reduce the power of the Emperor. Hence he cultivated the friendship and assisted the cause of the Protestants in Germany, while he was inflicting imprisonment and death upon their brethren in France. It was not partiality for Protestantism, but hostility to Charles, that moved him; and so strong was this sentiment, that he did not hesitate to make common cause with the Turks, for the sake of weakening his adversary. On the whole, during the reign of Francis, Protestant opinions found not a little favor among the higher classes. For a while, it was Lutheranism that was adopted. But Luther was too thoroughly a German to be congenial to the French mind. It was Calvinism, as soon as Calvinism arose, which attracted the sympathies of the Frenchmen who accepted the Protestant faith.

Farel and Calvin were both fugitives from persecution in France. Calvin returned to Geneva from his banishment in 1541. More and more Geneva became an asylum for Frenchmen whom intolerance drove from their country. Many of them came, wearing the scars which the instruments of torture had left upon them. As the victims of religious cruelty emerged from the passes of the Jura and caught sight of the holy city, they fell on their knees with thanksgivings to God.2 From thirty printing-offices of Geneva, Protestant works were sent forth, which were scattered over France by colporteurs at the peril of their lives. The Bible in French was issued in a little volume, which it was easy 1 Ranke, i. 116.

2 Sismondi, Histoire des Français, xiii. 24 seq.

to hide; also, the Psalms, in the version of Clement Marot, with the interlinear music of Goudimel.1 Calvin was indefatigable in exhorting and encouraging his countrymen by his letters. Preachers who were trained at his side returned to their country and ministered to the little churches which long held their worship in secret. The Reformation spread rapidly, especially in the South of France. The spectacle of godly men of pure lives, led to the stake, while atheists and scoffers were tolerated if they would go to the mass, alienated many from the old religion.

Henry II., who succeeded his father in 1547, had no sympathy with Protestantism. He might support the Protestants abroad when a political object was to be gained, as when he entered into a treaty with Maurice at the time when the latter was about to take up arms against the Emperor; but at home he coöperated with the Sorbonne, who were more and more busy in their work of extirpating false doctrine by burning the books and persons of its professors. The rage of the common people, and even the holy horror of licentious courtiers, were excited by fictitious tales of abominable vice which was said to be practiced in the meetings of the Huguenots. To be objects of this sort of calumny has been a common experience of sects which have been obliged to conduct their rites in secrecy.2

Yet in this reign the Protestant opinions made great progress. In 1558, it was estimated that there were two thousand places of reformed worship scattered over France, and congregations numbering four hundred thousand. They were organized after the Presbyterian form, and were adherents of the Genevan type of doctrine. In

1 See an eloquent passage on the influence of Geneva in Michelet, Guerres de Religion, p. 108.

2 Such accusations were brought against Jews in the Middle Ages. Like charges were brought against the early Christians in the Roman Empire. Gibbon, II. ch. xv.

PERSECUTION BY HENRY II.

255

1559 they ventured to hold a general synod in Paris, where they adopted their confession of faith and determined the method of their church organization.

After Henry concluded the disastrous peace of CateauCambresis, by which his conquests in Italy and in the Netherlands were given up to Spain, and his daughter, Elizabeth, was to be married to Philip II., and his sister, Margaret, to the Duke of Savoy, he commenced with fresh vigor the work of persecution. It was involved in this treaty that the two kings should unite in the suppression of heresy. "The King of France, which, since the reverses of Charles V., had been the first power in Europe, bought, at the price of many provinces, the rank of Lieutenant of the King of Spain in the Catholic party." He unexpectedly presented himself in a session of Parliament, where a milder policy had begun to find advocates, and ordered the two members who had expressed themselves most emphatically on that side to be shut up in the Bastile. He declared that he would make the extirpation of heresy his principal business, and by letter threatened the Parliament and inferior courts in case they showed any leniency to heretics. But in a tilt which formed a part of the festivals in honor of the marriages, a splinter from the spear of Montgomery, the Captain of his Guards, struck his eye and inflicted a deadly wound. It seemed to the Protestants that in the moment of extreme peril the hand of the Almighty was stretched out to deliver them (1559).

Thus far persecution had failed of its design. "The fanatics and the politicians had thought to annihilate heresy by the number and atrocity of the punishments: they perceived with dismay that the hydra multiplied itself under their blows. They had only succeeded in exalting to a degree unheard of before, all that there are of heroic powers in the human soul. For one martyr 1 Martin, viii. 480.

who disappeared in the flames, there presented themselves a hundred more: men, women, children, marched to their punishment, singing the Psalms of Marot, or the Canticle of Simeon

Many expired in ecstasy, insensible to the refined cruelties of the savages who invented tortures to prolong their agony. More than one judge died of consternation or remorse. Others embraced the faith of those whom they sent to the scaffold. The executioner at Dijon was converted at the foot of the pyre. All the great phenomena, in the most vast proportions, of the first days of Christianity, were seen to reappear. Most of the victims died with the eye turned towards that New Jerusalem, that holy city of the Alps, where some had been to seek, whence others had received the Word of God. Not a preacher, not a missionary was condemned who did not salute Calvin from afar, thanking him for having prepared him for so beautiful an end. They no more thought of reproaching Calvin for not following them into France than a soldier reproaches his general for not plunging into the mêlée." 1

We have now to refer to the circumstances that converted the Huguenots into a political party. With the accession of Francis II., a boy of sixteen, Catharine de Medici, the widow of the late king and the mother of his successor, hoped to gratify her ambition by ruling the kingdom. The daughter of Lorenzo II., of Florence, and the niece of Clement VII., her childhood had been passed in an atmosphere of duplicity, and she had thoroughly imbibed the unprincipled maxims of the Italian school of politics. The death of the Dauphin had made her husband the heir of the throne; but his aversion to her was such that, at an earlier day, when it was supposed that no children would spring from her marriage, there was an idea 1 Martin, viii. 480.